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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27115975">Blood and Shadow</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/howevernot/pseuds/howevernot'>howevernot</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>eternity is also full of eyes [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dark (TV 2017)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Canon Disabled Character, Canon-Typical Violence, Cuddling &amp; Snuggling, Dialogue Heavy, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I guess???, M/M, Nostalgia, Panic Attacks, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slice of Life</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 17:34:26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>7,728</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27115975</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/howevernot/pseuds/howevernot</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>They were going on a weekend trip to a humanitarian aid station. It was never as simple as that for them though. </p><p> </p><p>“This isn’t a life,” Jonas told him calmly.</p><p>Noah fixed his piercing gaze on Jonas, stopping in the middle of the road.</p><p>“It’s the only one I have.”</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Elisabeth Doppler &amp; Jonas Kahnwald, Elisabeth Doppler &amp; Noah | Hanno Tauber, Jonas Kahnwald/Noah | Hanno Tauber</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>eternity is also full of eyes [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1961791</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>50</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Blood and Shadow</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This one was very self-indulgent, folks! Though I'm not sure that comes across? My idea of self indulgent is a little off kilter. Also, as always, this is unbetaed. All mistakes are my own.</p><p>The title is borrowed from Kimiko Hahn's poem "Vivisection."</p><p>Many thanks to Vero and Sage for cheerleading me through the writing of this series and encouraging me to make things even sadder than initially planned. ily</p><p>For additional warnings please check the end notes.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Can we stop?” Jonas asked as they passed his old street. </p><p>Noah just nodded; Elisabeth shrugged. They were supposed to be on their way to a humanitarian aid center to the west, but when Jonas saw his old house peaking out from the foliage, he could not resist.</p><p>He led them down the cracked road, Elisabeth and Noah trailed behind him, rifles slung across their chests, carrying heavy packs. He waved them off in the yard and entered his house alone.</p><p>He found the house as he left it, leaky ceilings, mold blooming black on the walls, vines growing through the walls. The bag of petrified plums was still in the fridge. There were animal tracks in the grime on the floor.</p><p>Jonas came here sometimes to look at the water damaged photos on the wall, or to trace his fingers along the brushstrokes in his father’s artworks. He imagined that if he moved his hand in just the right way, or pressed into a fingerprint in the paint that maybe he and his father would be united in time by the same movement. </p><p>Something scurried away when he stepped into the attic. There he found his father’s paintings disintegrated. Most were puddles of mush on the ground, still others were blacked with water stains.</p><p>A knock behind him broke his medication and he turned, heart racing, rifle half raised. It was Elisabeth.</p><p>“You were taking too long,” she signed to him. Then without waiting for an answer, she began inspecting the room. Noah could not remember if she had ever been inside before.</p><p>“Tell me about him?” she commanded.</p><p>“Who?”</p><p>She rolled her eyes.</p><p>“Your father.”</p><p>Jonas stared at a cup of brushes, spilled on the floor by time, or rain or a racoon, searching for something to say. ‘He killed himself, even when I begged him to stay,’ he could have said. Maybe, ‘I expected him to care that I was skinny, scared, and shaking when I last saw him, but instead he decided he needed to die.’ Or ‘he didn’t even ask about my scar; someone tried to kill me and he didn’t even ask.’ He could not unlock his hands to say any of that though. </p><p>In the absence of conversation, Jonas continued his pilgrimage duties. He pulled sketchbooks out of a drawer, looking for anything salvageable. The first was soggy and illegible, the next was completely blank. Eventually, he found one tucked into the back of the drawer that was undamaged. There he found sketches for larger works, with notes for colors, and names of those who commissioned the works. Jonas had never understood why his father needed to sketch out abstract paintings. Why not just start and see where that led? But his father had always been a planner. He and his mom were well matched in that way. She could see a hundred ways out of pinch. </p><p>Jonas had talked endlessly in therapy about how his parent’s obsessive foresight just served to make him an anxious rigid child. His therapists had told him that he needed to find ways to be more adaptable, to manage his anxiety. He had never quite succeeded until the collapse of his world forced him to.</p><p>Jonas tapped Elisabeth’s shoulder, sketchbook in hand. They spent a few minutes looking through the drawings. In among the endless studies for larger works were some sketches of figures in red, and a series of studies of geometric designs, a hurried study of a lily.</p><p>“He was careful, thoughtful. Maybe a little anxious. He and I got along really well when I was little. He always wanted to know what I was thinking, how I was feeling. He was always a little sad but I thought that was normal. Artists are supposed to be sad, like van Gogh or Rothko.”</p><p>Elisabeth nodded, looking thoughtful. He left her paging through the sketchbook. Looking around the room Jonas suddenly felt a little like he was trying to resurrect a corpse, like this whole house was some bloated rotten thing that he kept returning to in hopes of finding it alive. He remembered that story he read in school once, where the man would not bury his friend until a maggot fell from his nose. The drawings were just wriggling maggots. He tapped on Elisabeth’s shoulder again, “Come on, let’s go.”</p><p>The found Noah standing at the back door, just outside the broken door, waiting where Elisabeth left him. </p><p>“Are you done?” he asked them. </p><p>Jonas nodded. </p><p>“Can we stop by my house?” Elisabeth asked.</p><p>Noah and Jonas shared a glace. </p><p>Jonas shrugged.</p><p>“Which way is it again?” Noah asked.</p><p>Elisabeth waved towards her street, “Follow me.”</p><p>Of the two of them with homes to return to, Elisabeth was far less likely to visit. Sometimes, Jonas would disappear from the hut for days. Sometimes, Noah found him bleeding or gasping or unconscious on the floor. Sometimes he did not go back to hurt himself, just to look, to touch, to sleep on the floor in the attic and forget to eat for days. Noah was always there to drag him back. Jonas asked him once how he always seemed to know that Jonas was giving up, if he had some special sense, if Adam had told him all the times Jonas would run away to try and end it all. Noah had snorted and told him, “I sleep beside you every night, I share every meal with you. You think I don’t notice when you’re getting depressed?”</p><p>The big heavy security door of Elisabeth’s house had long since rusted shut. They climbed in through the hole left in the dining room by a falling tree. </p><p>They startled a few cats out of the living room when they thundered in. There was not much to look at. Elisabeth’s bedroom had been crushed the tree; the kitchen had been trashed by looters. </p><p>Jonas always felt like a bandit in a house like that, with its boring impersonal art, and its pale blue walls and inoffensive furniture, even now as everything was in falling to pieces. It had always been a home scraped clean of any signs of family.</p><p>Elisabeth did not look around the house. Instead, she sat on the dirty floor and looked at the sagging dirty couch.</p><p>Noah knelt down beside her. </p><p>“You know, I used to sit on that couch, every day after school, and hope my parents might notice me.”</p><p>Noah rubbed her shoulder.</p><p>“They would all walk around just speaking to each other, over my head. And I was lucky. There were kids in my school whose parents never bothered to learn sign at all. But I still hated them, everyday at dinner I sat at dinner as they all talked, acting like I was too stupid to have a conversation.”</p><p>She was not crying. Noah rested his cheek on the top of her head and held her there on the floor. For a moment she sat with her eyes closed. Then she looked up at Jonas, “But I still want them back. Why do I still want them back?” </p><p>“They were your parents,” Noah answered, letting her go, “of course you want them back.”</p><p>“Do you want your parents back?” Jonas asked him.</p><p>Noah clenched his jaw, “No.”</p><p>Jonas did not know what he had been trying to prove but Elisabeth seemed to know because she reached for Noah, kissed his cheek, held their foreheads together.</p><p>They remained a few minutes longer, Elisabeth still sitting on the floor remembering. As they waited, Noah came to stand beside Jonas, knocking their shoulders together. Jonas wanted to sling an arm around his waist but resisted, feeling exposed, awkward. Noah rested a hand in the middle of his back. Jonas let out the breath and pressed into the comfort.</p><p>When at last Elisabeth climbed to her feet, she shuffled over to them and pulled Jonas’s head down to kiss his forehead.</p><p>Without further discussion they set off.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>~~~~~</p>
</div>On the first day’s walk, they passed two herds of deer and an entire patch of forest earth overturned by a boar. They were walking on what was once a major road, but was now not much more than a broken span of asphalt. They passed the occasional steeple and plume of smoke in the distance. They say nobody else.<p>“Did you always know you were gay?” Elisabeth asked late in the day, just as afternoon was turning over into evening. </p><p>Jonas pointed at himself, then at Noah with a questioning look, not sure who she was addressing. </p><p>“Both of you.”</p><p>“Am I gay?” Jonas asked in turn.</p><p>“I mean you are with Noah,” Elisabeth answered.</p><p>He frowned at her, confused by the question.</p><p>“I never thought about it.”</p><p>“But when did you know you were gay?” Elisabeth asked.</p><p>Jonas shrugged. “I have no idea. I kissed Bartosz once, when we were little, but so did Magnus. I never really thought about it.”</p><p>Elisabeth shook her head, forehead crinkled endearingly.</p><p>“What about you? When did you know?”</p><p>“It was still illegal when I was growing up,” was all the answer Noah offered.</p><p>“Wait really?” </p><p>Noah nodded, face blank. Elisabeth did not press it further.</p><p>“I just always wonder why my dad would have married my mom if he knew he was gay,” she told them eventually.</p><p>“Maybe he didn’t know until later,” Jonas offered.</p><p>“Come on, we need to set up camp,” Noah interrupted, pressing ahead, leaving Jonas and Elisabeth glancing at each other behind his back.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>~~~~~</p>
</div>The next morning, Jonas found himself settled between Noah and Elisabeth in the tent, under their blankets. Jonas had his arm slung over Noah’s waist; his cold nose tucked into the back of Jonas’s neck. Elisabeth’s legs tangled up with his was; her back touched his chest every time she inhaled. They had never once slept beside each other in all the years they had been living together. He laid absolutely still, barely breathing. His arms were curled against her back.<p>For all Elisabeth and Jonas were dear friends, the two of them had never quite learned to be near each other. Noah and Elisabeth had never seemed to struggle with touching each other. There was no awkwardness, no fear, just easy comfort. But between the two of them any intimacy was always stuttering and awkward.</p><p>Luckily, he only had to wait a few moments in breathless discomfort before Elisabeth woke. She turned to him, smiling as she wished him good morning. Jonas signed back and the movement woke Noah, who shifted and groaned into Jonas’s back.</p><p>“Are you warm enough?” Elisabeth asked.</p><p>Jonas frowned at her.</p><p>“You always complain of being cold when we sleep in a tent. I thought if you were in the middle, you might be warm.” </p><p>Jonas had never been one for camping. Waking in the damp morning cold was always something he loathed. He hated how his nose was numb and his fingers stiff, and how any movement let cold air waft under the blankets. But Elisabeth was right; he was warm between them, warmer than usual.</p><p>“The back of my neck is still cold,” he answered solemnly. Elisabeth smiled at him and poked his side. He hissed. Feeling bold he tickled her, making her shriek. This in turn caused Noah to startle awake, sitting halfway up with gasp and a hand fisted around knife. Elisabeth was still clutching Jonas’s hands, trying to prevent further tickling, but Jonas wrenched a hand away to touch Noah.</p><p>“Sorry, we were just messing around,” he said, aloud, as Noah was not yet looking at him.</p><p>Noah never panicked like Jonas did. His breath did not heave, he did not cringe from touch, he just sat absent and coiled tight with something Jonas could never quite touch. Jonas rubbed his thigh, through the blanket. Elisabeth reached over him to touch Noah’s shoulder, leaving her half on top on Jonas.</p><p>It took a moment for Noah to recover. When he did, Elisabeth smiled and bid him a good morning, before shuffling out of the tent, leaving the two of them alone.</p><p>“Elisabeth said she made me sleep in the middle to keep me warm,” Jonas murmured into the silence. </p><p>“You complained last time.”</p><p>“No, I didn’t.” Jonas was certain he had not mentioned it.</p><p>“Yes, you did. You shivered all morning; you were even shivering in your sleep.”</p><p>Jonas winced. “Sorry.”</p><p>Noah shrugged, “Let me out.”</p><p>Jonas pulled his legs up. As he passed, Noah pressed a brief kiss to his cheek.</p><p>Jonas grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back to kiss him properly. Noah’s breath stank and he was still distracted, only kissing him briefly before leaving without a word.</p><p>Jonas wrapped himself up in a damp scarf and tugged on a sweater. He rolled up the sleeping bags and thin camping mattresses, before he pulled on his cold damp boots and stepped out into the gauzy purple morning.  </p><p>Elisabeth was already eating a slice of bread and munching on jerky. Noah was pouring over the map while he waited for their little kettle to boil on the camping burner. </p><p>Jonas wandered off to relieve himself. In the woods, he saw a fox, a vixen with three little pups trailing behind her, just a few shimmers of brilliant red in the misty morning cold. </p><p>He reported the fox to Elisabeth over his own slice of bread and strip of jerky. Her eyes widened and the look of delight made her look like that tiny kid Jonas used to see around town sometimes. </p><p>“You know once,” he started when they were all packed and back on the road, “I went to this party, way out in the woods. Someone brought tequila. We all got so drunk and right as it was getting dark, we all saw this fox. So, Magnus is trying to take a picture because he wants to show Michael and his mom, but he’s so drunk he can’t keep the phone straight and we were all laughing at him. I think Marta and Franziska were on the phone to Katharina. We used to call her at parties when we were too drunk and just cry to her on the phone,” he paused, suddenly feeling choked up, remembering the one time he called his dad at a party. He’d been drunk and happy and had just talked to his dad about nothing in particular. “We loved those pictures.”</p><p>“I remember those,” Elisabeth told him with a grin, “Franziska printed them out and tapped them to her wall.”</p><p>Jonas smiled at the thought. They had been truly awful photos.</p><p>“I still don’t understand smartphones,” Noah said after a moment.</p><p>Jonas looked to Elisabeth. They had been struggling to explain to Noah the culture they both came from with little success. Sure, he had been learning nuclear physics alongside Jonas for years now, but how could they explain almost a hundred years of technology and pop culture when most of it was gone anyway. Most days Noah did not mention it, but moments like this made Jonas remember that in fact, they were still cultural strangers.</p><p>They walked for miles, Jonas and Elisabeth chatting the whole time about their families, about Franziska and Magnus. Noah hardly spared a glace at them. It was hard enough trying to walk as a group and sign, but they needed someone with eyes on the road anyway, watching for any company.</p><p>Just as the day was turning over to evening Elisabeth turned her attention on Noah. </p><p>“Noah, what was your mother like?” Elisabeth asked, instead of pursuing the topic further. </p><p>“She was strict,” was all Noah had to say.</p><p>“That’s all?” </p><p>Noah shrugged, “She died when I was six. I don’t know what you expect me to remember.”</p><p>Elisabeth made a frustrated noise.</p><p>“Look, you two can reminisce all you want about your amazing childhoods, but leave me out of it. My mother died when I was six; I was ten a world war started and you say it was only the first one. There’s nothing worth remembering.” He did not stop walking or look at either of them as he spoke.</p><p>“What, you think you had it so terrible? There was no joy? The world ended when I was 9. My dad was killed in front of me. My life ended!” Elisabeth shot back.</p><p>“Mine didn’t begin until I got here. You think your lives ended? What are you doing here then? Talking to me? What the fuck is this if not our lives?” Noah was walking backwards by now, signing to both of them.</p><p>“This isn’t a life,” Jonas told him calmly.</p><p>Noah fixed his piercing gaze on Jonas, stopping in the middle of the road.</p><p>“It’s the only one I have.”</p><p>“We have a fucking life here. I’m sorry that you can’t have smartphones and awkward family dinners but we have something,” Noah said, and for a just a moment Jonas could see how pale he was, could see the deep circles under his eyes, could see how thin his face was with deprivation. </p><p>Elisabeth touched Noah’s shoulder; his jaw was tight but he looked her dead in the eye. She tugged him into a hug. Jonas stood there, feeling apart. What was he doing here with them? Most of the time he couldn’t even look at the two of them, much less reach out to them. He had no comforting words to offer; this was not a life they were living. It was a kind of torture for Jonas. He had nowhere to go but forward, with these two people, or alone. But he did not have to enjoy a moment of it. But looking at Noah, who had slipped an arm under Elisabeth’s pack, and Elisabeth, with her blonde head tucked under Noah’s chin, he could see a way for Noah to build a life, before Jonas would rip it to shreds.  </p><p>Elisabeth gestured for Jonas, and he went to them – as if he had any choice – to tuck him head against Noah’s shoulder. He would take what comfort he could, he decided. </p><p>“Is this really so much better?” Elisabeth asked when they pulled apart. Noah kept his hand low on Jonas’s back.</p><p>“It’s not so much worse. The past isn’t my paradise,” Noah told them, taking his hand back in order to speak.</p><p>Elisabeth nodded firmly, “We will build something better.”</p><p>Noah nodded back.</p><p><i>I will give you a life that does not pain you both to live,</i> Jonas thought, watching the two of them as they walked away.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>~~~~~</p>
</div>For the next two days they avoided speaking of family. For the next two nights Jonas woke between them. On the second morning he woke to Elisabeth spooning him with Noah curled towards him, as if he were the contents of a parenthesis. He laid there, taking slow breaths not sure whether to sink into the comfort or panic.<p>As they neared the aid-station, they began to see other signs of life. Other tents along the road in the morning, a family with two children far ahead, a lone man climbing out of the woods, hand on his rifle.</p><p>Noah had been worrying for the duration of the trip that they would not find the building of the aid station. Claudia had only given them the name of a town, not directions to the building. But as they arrived in town in became clear they did not need to worry. There were signs and a steady stream of people wandering towards what turned out to be an old <i>Gymnasium.</i> The building might have once been pink or maybe orange but time and endless rain had rendered it an off grey. But otherwise it was still in good shape, most of the windows were even intact. It would be completely unremarkable, except for the tents set up around it and the armed guards at the door.</p><p>Jonas felt multiple sets of eyes watching them as they walked up to the guards.</p><p>“No weapons inside,” one guard told them.</p><p>“We’re not leaving them outside,” Noah answered.</p><p>“There’s a gun locker, or you can leave someone out here with the guns.”</p><p>Jonas translated for Elisabeth.</p><p>“I don’t have a problem with leaving them in a locker,” she told them.</p><p>“Where’s the locker?” Noah asked.</p><p>They tucked away all their rifles into a locker in what must have been a gym changing room. No one had checked them over and Jonas still had a handgun in his own pack, and he knew Noah and Elisabeth had knives somewhere on their person.</p><p>They headed to the clothing exchange first. Somehow clothes had become a special kind of joy for Elisabeth. Not that she was obsessed with beautiful clothes – fashion had long since fallen to the wayside for all of them – but she liked finding a new sweater or a new raincoat, liked things that had not been patched and worn and stained. More than that, she reveled in the taking of something. She took a special vicious joy in raiding homes and stealing other’s belongings. Jonas still found it macabre. Most of this had once belonged to someone, someone now dead, somehow who had loved, and cooked pasta after work and spilled wine on the carpet and now would never experience those petty joys again.</p><p>“Three clothing items per person and a pair of shoes,” the person at the door yelled after Elisabeth.</p><p>“How much will it be?” Jonas asked as Noah and Elisabeth wandered off, already cringing thinking of the things he would have to trade for this privilege. They had brought jerky and soap and bullets in calibers they do not use and other bits and bobs to trade but really Jonas was reluctant to part with any of it.</p><p>“Nothing,” the person answered.</p><p>Jonas just stared at the other man. It was a talent he learned he had recently, to stare someone into discomfort.</p><p>“There was some kind of donation; I don’t know. It’s all free. Just pick something out before it’s all gone,” the guard advised. </p><p>Inside, Elisabeth was poking around a mound of sweaters; Noah was looking at pants. Jonas knelt by a pile of shirts and started pulling out things that would fit him. </p><p>After a few minutes, Elisabeth threw something at his head. The cloth hit him in the face and he over-balanced, falling to the side tangled in what he discovered was an oversized sweater. Elisabeth let out a laugh, which turned some heads. The was sweater wool, with an extra fleece layer inside for insulation. It was probably warmer than anything he owned. </p><p>“So, you can stop shivering at night,” Elisabeth signed at him.</p><p>“Thank you,” he told her. </p><p>He got his revenge later by whipping a pair of pants at her from across the room. She let out a shocked noise and her expression was so offended that Noah doubled over, filling the auditorium with his laughter. </p><p>After they picked out clothes, they left Noah in the foyer to haggle and barter with the people gathered there selling their wares. Meanwhile, the two of them followed signs to the doctors. This was the real reason they had come to the aid station. They were not so desperate for food or clothes that they truly needed to be here. But medical care and a dentist was an unusual privilege in these strange times.</p><p>In the doctor’s office they were weighed, measured, and stripped of their jackets and sweaters and shirts down to their skin. They were poked, prodded, palpitated, injected. The nurse tutted at Jonas’s thinness, the doctor asked about the visible scar on Jonas’s upper chest.</p><p>Of his shoulder the doctor said, “Normally I would suggest some scans and physiotherapy, maybe even surgery to correct the scar tissue. However, we don’t have any physiotherapists on staff and surgery is a risk I’m not willing to take. Does it cause you any pain?” it did but he shook his head. “Are you limited in your daily activities?” He wasn’t. He had to hold his rifle a little differently after he had healed and he couldn’t hold himself up on only that arm. He would never do pushups again, and sometimes the wound ached, but really it wasn’t anything he could not push through.</p><p>The doctor shook her head, “Right then I can show you some exercises that might help, but I don’t have much more to offer.” </p><p>He shrugged and she showed him a few basic stretches and strength exercises. If his mother was still alive, she would have worked that shoulder into painless submission. She would not have been tender, but relentless in smoothing the joint into normalcy. He accepted by now that in her absence he would forever be aching.</p><p>Elisabeth’s exam was less exciting. She was better fed than Jonas, her scars less drastic. The doctor asked her questions about her period, her digestion, her vision. Jonas dutifully translated each question and each answer in turn. He did not meet the doctor’s eye as he translated.</p><p>Jonas had not found the doctor so difficult, but the dentist he hated. He hated the dentist with his fingers in Jonas’s mouth. He could taste the nitrile and disinfectant on his tongue. The scrape of the tools along his gums rattled through his head making pain bloom in his forehead. Under his sweaters he began to sweat. He wanted to bite down. He could imagine it too. The blood that would gush into his mouth and coat his teeth. Noah once told him that if someone ever got him on his knees again, offering service in exchange for his life, he should just bite down and hope the person bled to death. Jonas had told him, “Why would I do that when I’ve got you to come and rescue me?” </p><p>Here in the dentist’s chair, he was not thinking of Noah, or even that man Noah had rescued him from, he was thinking of his teeth in the meat of this dentist’s hand. His throat was getting hot; he shifted restlessly on the chair.</p><p>Elisabeth poked the dentist away when Jonas’s chest began to heave. She told him, “We can leave.”</p><p>She looked calm, unshakable. She had gained a steadiness in the last few years, an easy confidence that would serve her later. Jonas wished he could be so confident. Even after all these years, he felt like the earth might open to drown him at any moment.</p><p>“Just give me a minute,” he answered then closed his eyes, trying to remember that this was a fucking dentist’s office, not an attack. Elisabeth held his hand for the rest of the appointment. </p><p>Then it was Elisabeth’s turn. He stood beside her translating as needed, watching the dentist drill into her mouth, chewing on his numb lips. </p><p>A week before, he had seen a freshly dead man lying on the ground, mouth hanging open. Jonas saw the yellow and black rotted teeth in his jaw, the gaping, unhealed wounds where teeth had once been. The pustulant holes had graced Jonas’s dreams the next night, where Marta had lunged at him, guttering, bleeding, her gasping mouth full of broken teeth. The scene had transformed after that, into a Francis Bacon inspired slaughterhouse – teeth littered the floor. In comparison, this was not so bad.</p><p>The dentist apologized to Elisabeth just as before he drilled into her teeth. They usually would not have done so many fillings at once, but there was so little time and they were not about to come back to the aid station any time soon. Jonas translated.</p><p>“Nothing will ever be the same; you don’t need to apologize for that,” she responded. The dentist just went back to work.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>~~~~~</p>
</div>They stayed the night on the floor in an upstairs room. Jonas insisted they sleep against the wall, with Elisabeth against the wall and Jonas on the outside. The other two tolerated his paranoia.<p>In the night, Jonas woke to shuffling and a warm puff on the back of his neck. Turning over, he saw a man, half climbing over Jonas, leveraging his body in the air above him. Jonas moved before he could think about it. He shoved the man to the wall, knife to his belly. The movement woke Noah and Elisabeth. Noah was up in an instant with a gun trained on the strange man. Elisabeth was on her feet too, knife in hand, looking dazed. </p><p>Jonas wanted to snarl at the other man but he was mute in his fury. It was Noah who spoke.</p><p>“What the fuck do you think you were doing?” he snarled, with all the vehemence Jonas could not express. </p><p>“Sorry, sorry! It was dark! I mistook him for my wife!” the man had his hands up.</p><p>Jonas pressed the knife harder into the man’s stomach.</p><p>“Hey! Hey!” someone yelled. A moment later, the man was lit by flashlights and grey with fear in the harsh light.</p><p>Jonas turned, not even flinching at the weapon’s trained on them, “Get him out of here.”</p><p>The guards took the man by the shoulder. “Up!” they ordered. </p><p>Jonas stayed on his knees on the remains of what had been only moments before a peaceful bed. He tried to push himself up, but found that he couldn’t steady himself. Noah tucked a hand under his armpit and tugged him up.</p><p>Elisabeth asked, “Are you ok? What happened?”</p><p>Jonas just shook his head.</p><p>“What happened?” asked a guard who was still standing here.</p><p>Jonas shook his head again.</p><p>“Is he a mute?” the guard asked Noah.</p><p>Noah ignored him.</p><p>“Jonas, what happened?”</p><p>“I woke up – he was over me,” he told Noah. “He was breathing on my neck.” Jonas was shaking again. He felt a surge of hatred towards himself. He turned to the guard.</p><p>“Look, he was trying to rob me, he was trying to stab me, he was confused, I don’t fucking know. Get him the fuck out of here,” he said with all the vehemence he had failed to deliver to the other man.</p><p>The guard held up his hands.</p><p>“We’ll make him sleep in the other room,” the guard said.</p><p>Jonas did not deign that with a response. When he looked back to Noah and Elisabeth, he was explaining what had just happened in rapid signs. Jonas just dropped cross-legged to the floor, on the heap of their blankets. </p><p>“Be back in a few minutes,” Elisabeth signed to him and Jonas nodded, suddenly exhausted.</p><p>Alone he felt for the first time the eyes of everyone in the room on him. He could hear their whispers, though he could not make out the contents of any one conversation. He felt a little like a house fire, and was that not what he was? A disaster for everyone to watch, a slow disaster, a man so useless he could not even die. He curled up over himself, still sitting on the floor, waiting for the whispers to die down.</p><p>When Elisabeth returned, she had two little mugs of tea with her that she must have pilfered from the kitchen. She sat beside him, with their knees pressed together, as she drank. He was not sure he could drink anything without throwing up, but with a tight look for Noah, he took a snip. He found he was cold and thirsty and the tea was comforting even if it made his stomach cramp.</p><p>“You’re sleeping in the middle,” Noah told him, after he had returned the empty mugs to the kitchen.</p><p>Jonas would protest, but he was still shaking, his shoulders were aching with it. He acquiesced. Noah slid a hand into his shirt and over his stomach. Elisabeth made a small snuffling noise as she arranged herself against him. He felt suddenly too big for his own skin. He did not sleep for many hours.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>~~~~~</p>
</div>They set off early the next morning, eager to avoid any more trouble. Before they left, they traded off ammunition and soap for tooth paste, hard candy, and painkillers. With their newly fixed teeth and their new clothes they set off on the road home.<p>Just as they passed the threshold someone called to them.</p><p>Noah and Jonas turned; Elisabeth followed a moment later.</p><p>“I know your eager to leave after last night, but we’re having Carnival celebrations tonight! My family and couple others brought drinks and we’re planning to make a night of it. You’re invited if you want,” she offered. She was a heavyset blonde woman. She looked motherly. Her face was weathered by the sun and her smile was friendly enough. He did not trust her a bit.</p><p>Jonas shook his head.</p><p>“No, thank you though. We really have to leave,” he told her, avoiding her eye.</p><p>Her look transformed to one of disappointment and Jonas felt his skin crawl.</p><p>“Ok, well goodbye. Sorry about Jan last night, by the way. He got into the wine a little early; he didn’t mean anything by it,” she explained.</p><p>Noah looked like he was about to say something but Jonas grabbed his wrist, “Come on.”</p><p>“Is it really Carnival?” Elisabeth asked once they were out of town.</p><p>“I don’t know,” Noah answered.</p><p>“Seems too cold for it to be Carnival,” Jonas answered.</p><p>The year before his father died, Jonas had gone to Carnival with Marta and their friends. Marta had worn cat makeup for the even and they spent the whole parade trying to identify Marta’s dad under his mask. They had only identified Ulrich when he came over to Jonas in his wooden devil mask and stared Jonas down. Magnus had and Marta had cackled at when Ulrich grabbed him and painted a bright red streak down his cheek. After the parade they bought beer from the grocery store and had gotten drunk in the woods. </p><p>“Do you remember the year Franziska lost her shoes at carnival?” Elisabeth asked.</p><p>“No,” Jonas answered, distracted, thinking of the way Marta had cleaned the paint from his cheek at day.</p><p>“Ulrich was in the Winden troupe that year and Franziska and Magnus were watching. So, they grabbed her and pulled off her shoes. Someone ran off with them. Magnus went after to get her shoes back but he couldn’t find one of them. The whole troupe was really apologetic, they’re not supposed to actually lose the shoes you know. Magnus ended up bullying his dad into giving up the pull cart full of paper shavings so he could carry Franziska home in it. She said she felt like a princess riding in that little wagon full of paper with only one shoe.” Elisabeth was smiling as she recalled her sister. </p><p>He could picture her like that, queenly and irate, sitting in a pile of shredded paper.</p><p>“The first year I took Agnes to the Carnival parade she was so scared so cried. The masks were too scary for her. I had to take her home. I’d done up her face like a kitten but she messed it up when she cried so I did it for her again. We played with the barn cats all afternoon instead.”</p><p>“I was scared of those masks until I was 11 at least,” Jonas confessed.</p><p>“When I joined our town’s troupe when I was 15. I made sure to smear her whole face with coal. She was livid,” Noah smiled at the memory.</p><p>“My mom claimed she got carried off by my dad when they were teenagers. She loved that story. Like my dad was kidnapping her to take her somewhere better,” Jonas told them. He would never get the chance to join the troupe now, but he never wanted to either. </p><p>“Wait, wait,” Jonas called out to Noah, “Give me the map.” Jonas had just recognized the name of a town on a roadside sign.</p><p>Noah stopped and handed it over with a sardonic eye roll, “We’re going the right way. See, we just take this road all the way to Winden.”</p><p>Jonas was not looking at Winden though.</p><p>“Ok, we have to stop here though,” he pointed out the town on the map. </p><p>“Why?” Noah asked, frowning at him. </p><p>“It’s a Carnival treat,” Jonas said.</p><p>He led them off the road, towards the town in the distance. Jonas cut through the overgrown fields towards his goal. After an hour of walking, their destination came into view. </p><p>Elisabeth gasped at the Roman temple. Without waiting for them, she raced towards it.</p><p>“What’s this?” Noah asked, brows furrowed.</p><p>“An archeological park. There used to be a Roman town here and they rebuilt everything on the old foundations.”</p><p>“There was a Roman town here?” Noah asked, looking even more confused.</p><p>“Yeah, they made it all the way to England. You didn’t know?” </p><p>“I know that, but I didn’t know this what here. I know Tacitus and Trier but I never thought about Romans here.” </p><p>Jonas shrugged. He thought it was something everyone here knew. </p><p>Noah had dropped out of school young because of the war. He was the best read of the three of them, but his education was even worse than Elisabeth’s. Jonas ached for him. Noah actually liked school, more than Jonas ever had. He still made it a point to read every book he could get his hands on. With his dedication he could have been a professor. Instead, he had been sweeping floors and working for Adam and now he was here, dragging Jonas through the apocalypse, sometimes by the hair. </p><p>Instead of saying any of that, Jonas launched into a halting history lesson. Noah waved him off after only a moment and went to follow Elisabeth to the temple. </p><p>Jonas did not bother climbing up, instead keeping an eye out for an ambush. He did not know why anyone would live here, but they had seen stranger things.</p><p>Jonas watched the two of them disappear into the temple. When they reemerged, they were flushed and grinning.</p><p>“I was here once! When I was little! On a class trip. We learned how they made Roman shoes and I ate Roman food.” </p><p>“I came here with my dad once,” Jonas told her.</p><p>“They didn’t let me go in the temple last time we were here. It was all fenced up. There wasn’t anything in it anyway but it was still cool.”</p><p>Jonas smiled at Noah over her head. The other man had that look of unbearable tenderness he got sometimes, like Elisabeth illuminated his world. If Noah wanted them to have a life, a real life and not just a facsimile, Jonas would give them that as best he could. </p><p>They wandered through a few reconstructed houses. The white and red paint was washed away by the rain and most of the terracotta roofs had been badly damaged but Elisabeth seemed to delight in every room. She narrated the tour with what little she remembered from her last visit. The rest she and Noah made up together, absurd things that made them all giggle. In this room the Romans kept a flock of starlings. This is where the gladiators slept, but they all had to squeeze into one bed. Jonas told them about the ruin he visited in Italy once. There had been three chairs in the town square where people would sit and present three sides to an argument. Noah had laughed for the next ten minutes at the idea of resolving town arguments via public fighting in what he essentially thought must have been time-out chairs. </p><p>“What’s that?” Noah asked after they visited the small amphitheater. He was pointing to modern building in the distance, all steel and broken glass.</p><p>“I think that was the museum,” Jonas shrugged.</p><p>It was indeed the museum, completely trashed. The glass cases were broken and picked over. There was a toppled statue on the ground floor, broken to pieces. Jonas hurt just looking at it. His dad had given him a healthy respect for art preservation. He had talked Jonas through fixative for drawings and the merits of different kinds of varnish and isolation coats and why acid free paper was important and why to always put works of art behind UV glass. His father had always wanted to leave a legacy. There was no legacy now. Better to leave a pile of bones on the doorstep than make a work of art.</p><p>“What use is looting this stuff anyway?” Noah asked poking at a pile of coins. </p><p>Jonas shrugged. He had never given much thought to what would happen to all the thousands of museums around the world until this very moment. What about the Louvre, he wondered? What about all the castles and palaces and ancient ruins? All those thousands of years of history and art and culture devastated. It seemed silly to care about a museum, any museum, when so many millions had died but the broken statue made him want to weep in a way the dead man with rotten teeth never had.</p><p>“Let’s see if we can find something worth taking home,” Elisabeth suggested.</p><p>They set off upstairs. The higher floors were not so ravaged as the lower ones. They examined little stone artifacts and ruined bronze swords and tiny terracotta figures and pottery fragments but failed to find anything worth taking.</p><p>On the third floor they found a room dedicated to metal bits and bobs. Pins, keys, locks, spoons, coins, handles, devotional figures. Jonas looked over a case full of keys, tiny and intricately carved, thick and blunt, strangely shaped, one with a horse head, one with the body of a naked woman as the handle.</p><p>Elisabeth stomped on the floor, making them both turn. She gestured to another case full of glass fragments and pottery shards.</p><p>“This could be us,” she said.</p><p>“What?” Jonas asked.</p><p>“If the world ever recovers, they’ll dig up Winden in a thousand years and put our keys in a museum.”</p><p>Jonas had never considered that outcome, that the world just healed without him. Who was to say that time would not go on into the eternal future? Certainly, Jonas was bound to go back for eternity, acting out the same tragedy until it became comedy but there must still be thousands out there in this dreaded future, living lives, having children, telling new stories, building new homes. Just because Winden was in ruins, just because Jonas himself was burning, did not mean that time would stop its eternal march towards something different. He could go back and destroy the knot they were all in but in doing so he would destroy what future this world had, whatever future that could possibly be.</p><p>“Do you want to be in a museum?” Jonas asked.</p><p>Elisabeth shrugged. </p><p>“One time, like a year before all this, I took a vacation north, near Denmark, and there was this bog body in one of the museums. She was bald and black as coal. She was beautiful, everyone wanted to look at her all the time. I wouldn’t mind that,” Elisabeth answered.</p><p>“Weren’t bog bodies all murdered?” Jonas asked. He was pretty sure he read that somewhere.</p><p>She shrugged again, as if the idea was not so upsetting. </p><p>“Would you have thrown me in a bog if that guy murdered me last night?” Jonas asked.</p><p>“What?” Elisabeth asked.</p><p>“If that guy stabbed me in the back, would you dump me in bog so someone would dig me up someday?” Jonas was not sure what he was asking.</p><p>“Jonas, he didn’t want to kill you,” Elisabeth said slowly, trying to be gentle.</p><p>“If I shot myself and actually died someday, is that what you would do?”</p><p>“There aren’t any bogs here, Jonas,” Noah reminded him.</p><p>“I hope no one remembers me. To be known forever for the worst thing that happened to me? To lie in a museum for everyone to look at, no. I don’t want anything left. I want to be annihilated from everyone’s memory,” he declared. </p><p>“Free from pain,” Noah said. He did not need to finish the mantra.</p><p>“If I’m dead, I won’t care about my body anymore. I’ll be free already.” Elisabeth told him. </p><p><i>I don’t want to leave any evidence,</i> Jonas did not say. He would never make either of them understand that any life Jonas lived burned everything its wake. He would not leave any evidence because he could not leave any evidence. It was the only way out. But maybe, just maybe, he could take these few years to himself first.</p><p>“I want to take a key,” Jonas said, instead of examining that train of thought further. “Elisabeth, look at that one,” he pointed it out. It was short with beautifully carved teeth and a delicate ring on the other end. It would be perfect for her, he thought. Elisabeth gestured for him to step back and hit the glass case with the butt of her rifle. </p><p>She handed it to him. </p><p>“It’s yours now,” she told him solemnly. </p><p>Elisabeth picked out a different key, larger than his, with a bent head and a ringed pattern on the handle. It looked more like a fork than key, if not for the square blunt teeth. </p><p>Noah, took much longer to pick something. He dropped his pack in one corner and bent over the cases, like a man in a jewelry store looking for a pendant for his wife. Despite the raincoat and gun and dirty face, Jonas could picture it. He could picture Noah, cleaned up, tall and beautiful, shopping for some beloved in some unknown future. </p><p>Finally, he picked out a tiny figure playing a flute.</p><p>“My mother used to sing in the inn. Everyone was too poor to give her any tips, but she never cared. She just liked to sing,” he told them, looking down at the little figure. “Or at least that’s what my dad told me.” </p><p>Noah tucked the little figurine away. </p><p>“Come on, we need to get going,” Jonas urged. </p><p>As he passed Noah he whispered, “Now you have a story from our lives together.”</p><p>Noah smiled at him. “I have hundreds of stories of my life with you; haven’t you been paying attention?”</p><p>They set off home with the keys to long lost doors tucked away in their pockets.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Warnings: some body horror, specifically involving teeth. There is an instant of a character trying to climb into bed with someone else without consent for nefarious reasons. It is implied that this was an attempted sexual assault but nothing actually happens. There is brief ableist language in this one. Let me know if I missed anything.</p><p>Ok now for some incredibly long winded meta that no one asked for. Idk how well known this is in the fandom but Winden seems to exist in this weird pocket dimension in Germany. The show itself is filmed in and around Berlin, which if you know Germany, you know those woods are in the east. There’s also east bloc architecture in some shots and the old town that Noah lived in was pretty clearly Hanseatic (aka near the sea). However, this presents a problem because the it’s pretty clear that the story takes place in West Germany, but there’s nowhere in West Germany that has those geographical features (flat, lakes, spruce(?) forest, nearish to the sea). Additionally, the province that they belong to is mad up. The police uniforms and license plates have a made-up crest (three pine trees). So, it’s this fun little geographical dilemma. The only existent cities that get named are (if I’m remembering correctly, don’t quote me) Marburg (in Hessen) and Frankfurt (also in Hessen). I bring this up because this fic makes reference to Roman ruins, which would not be present in East Germany or anywhere near a German Hanseatic city. However, I wanted to keep in spirit with the show by creating a slightly mind-boggling geographical dilemma, so I threw in Roman ruins (which are in south-west and western Germany)! That being said, the archeological park mentioned is based on Xanten, a real archeological park in Nordrhein-Westfalen. The artifacts mentioned are also based on artifacts seen in the museum on the park grounds.<br/>The Italian town with the argument chairs is Assisi. I’m sure the chairs were way more complicated than that but hey, we can’t expect Jonas to remember stuff like that.<br/>The descriptions of carnival are based on Faschings/Fastnacht traditions in Baden-Wurttemberg. Yes, that really is what carnival is like there, at least in my experience, lol.</p><p>Comments and kudos absolutely fuel my writing!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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